Skulduggery Pleasant - The Nightmare
by goXve
Summary: Part 1: Valkyrie wakes up from a nightmare after the recent events that accured in "Nightmare" and Skulduggery is there to comfort her. Set STRAIGHT after "Midnight", so if you've not read it, this story might contain spoilers. Part 2: Skulduggery is having a nightmare where his worst fear is coming to life. Will Valkyrie be able to comfort him?
1. Chapter 1

**This story takes place _right after_ the events of "Nightmare". If you have not read it, some parts of this story might contain spoilers. You've been warned!** **For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy this story! Please leave a review and tell me what you think :)**

* * *

 _Everywhere around her nothing else excisted but darkness and fire. She stood in the middle of a bridge with an abyss of flames beneath her. Tiniest little misstep and she would fall straight down into it and be annihilated..._

 _She raised her gaze from the abyss and instead concentrated on making her way across the bridge before that, which was chasing her, caught up to her. She could feel its presence, it was everywhere around her. What she could not do however, was to_ see _it. She knew it was there somewhere, but where she could not say. She hurried her steps and had come three quarters over the bridge when a shape appeared in front of her and cut of her only escape route._

 _She stopped and stared at the shape that stood there as equally still as a statue. It did not say anything, did not move. It just..._ existed _. She felt her magic pulsate in her body and let it zip out through her fingers as white lightning. She did not attack, not yet, but awaited to see what and if the shape was going to do something. When nothing happened she raised her hands against the shape so it could see the lightning in her hands._

" _I'm just going to say this_ once _. Get out of the way, otherwise I will be forced to hurt you." The shape did not answer but just continued to stand as still as before. She sighed. "Why don't they never listen?"_

 _She ran forward against the shape while she sent out her magic towards it. With a quickness she did not think was possible, the shape moved away from her attack and now stood behind her. Quickly, before it had time to grab her, she threw herself down on the bridge and rolled around before she quickly stood up. A kick against her chin made her see stars and she fell down on her ass with a confussed expression on her face._

" _What..." she said before a pair of hands lay around her throat and lifted up her._

 _She tried to pull away the hands that pushed against her throat and that cut off all air supply to her lungs, but despite how much she struggled the hands did not release their hold. Black dots now began to dance in front of her eyes and she desperately tried to get some air into her lungs, but nothing came. The panic welled upp inside of her. She did not want to die, she_ could not _, die like this! She must fight, she must..._

 _The shape let go of her throat with on of its hands and she could_ finally _breath in some air. She became dizzy of the measly, clean air that trickled into her and when she once again could focus she saw that the shape had pulled back the hood that covered its face. The person under it was someone she knew way too well..._

" _See what you've done to me, Valkyrie... This is what awaits me in the future. I will become an empty shell of the one I once was,_ before you made the unmentionable towards me _. I will become just like your precious reflection Stephanie but thousand times better. Our parents will never be able to see that there's something wrong with me. They will just think that I am an unusual happy kid."_

 _In front of her stood an older version of her beloved little sister Alice Edgley. She looked like she might be around 12 years old. As old as she herself had been when she had met Skulduggery and become a part of the magical society. Her blond hair was lighter (probably bleached by the sun) and her facial features had a more adult way over it. But it was Alice's eyes that got Valkyrie to shiver in discomfort. In Alice's light blue eyes were no kind of emotions. They were like a bottomless well of non-emotions. It was as if someone had sucked out all of Alice's emotions and left behind a shell of the once so emotional girl that Valkyrie loved over everything else._

" _Alice, I... I am sorry... I did not want to... I did not think... I_ did not know _that would happen..."_

 _Alice laughed a laugh without emotions and once again laid_ _her hand over Valkyrie's throat. "Do not worry, dear sister. I am here to make everything right. Relax, the more you struggle the more painful it will be."_

" _Alice, please..."_

 _Alice just laughed again and the last Valkyrie saw before the darkness fell over her was those unfeeling eyes..._

* * *

She awoke by her own scream and felt how hard her heart beat in her chest. She was clammy and she had managed to tangle the sheet around her body which gave her a sense of claustrophobia.

Before she had managed to struggle out of the sheet her bedroom door opened with such a force that the door bounced against the wall and back towards the person that had opened it. Strong arms lay around her struggling body and tried to help her, but just rather made it worse.

"Let me be!" she screamed and tried to get away the hands that had laid around her.

"Valkyrie, stop! It's me! Calm down!"

That voice... She would never be able to mistake that. It was as smooth as velvet and each time she heard it she knew that she was safe and that the owner to the voice always would be there for her.

"Skulduggery."

"Yes, it's me. I'm here now. Calm down. Take a deep breath. That's it. Better now?"

"Yes. Thank you."

Skulduggery did not answer but just looked at her with his black eye sockets where his eyes once had been. Despite he no longer having any eyes or any other human organs, he could see, feel and talk just like a normal human being. He always used to say that the benefits with being a living skeleton was that he never had to worry for things that other people needed like going to the toilet or eat.

He helped her out of the sheet before he let his hands wander over her body. She knew that he was checking for injuries but was too exhausted to be able to tell him that it was nothing wrong with her physically. She was exhausted inboard and had so been for several years now. She had hoped that everything would be for the better after the whole Darquesse-incident, but that had not been the case.

Everything had rather gotten worse...

Skulduggery lifted up her chin with his gloved hand so her eyes came in eye height with his own. "Valkyrie."

That was all he said. Just her name, but in that single word she could determine so much. In that single word she could hear what he felt for her, that he would always be there for her, that everything they had been through had brought them closer together. That nothing could separate them...

Valkyrie laid her arms around Skulduggery and hugged him hard. He laid his bony arms around her and hugged her back. In the same moment that she felt his body against her own the tears came. Her hands took a hard grip around Skulduggery's shirt collar and she pushed her face against his right bony shoulder. Her whole body was shaking from the crying and she felt how Skulduggery let his hands stroke over her back and hair while he whispered calming words in her ear.

"Sch, everything will be alright. We'll solve this. We've always done. Until the end."

Valkyrie smiled despite the tears. "Until the end..." she whispered.

She pulled away a little bit from him and dried her eyes. She had always thought it was hard to be forced to cry in front of other people, but with Skulduggery it at least was bearable.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For wetting your suit. This is one of your favourites, right? One of those that Ghastly made?"

"That may be the case but it is washable. Besides it wouldn't be the end of the world if I would be forced to get rid of it, since I have many more in stock."

"Just like with your plans, you mean?" Valkyrie asked and gave Skulduggery a crooked smile.

"I am going to pretend that I did not hear the sarcasm in your voice since I know that you find me flawless and perfect in every way possible."

Valkyrie roared with laughter and hit Skulduggery's arm.

"Ow! That was a bit unnecessarily, don't you think?"

"Nothing beats an opportunity to hit you, Skulduggery."

Skulduggery did not answer but just tilted his head and observed her. He laid his hand in hers and squeezed it. "I understand, Valkyrie. It is normal to dream nightmares after having been experiencing something traumatic. I am here for you if you want to talk about it."

She did not answer. She released her gaze on him and instead looked down on their intertwined hands. She so desperately wanted to tell about the nightmare to Skulduggery but at the same time it was something that held her back. She did not know how she should start or what he would think about her when he got to hear what she'd dreamed. Even if it was stupid of her to think that way, a small part of her was afraid that he would see her as weak.

Was it something she did not want to be in front of Skulduggery it was weak.

"I..." she began but interrupted herself.

Skulduggery squeezed her hand again and it made her take a deep breath to try to calm her hammering heart. She dared a quick glance up at him and what she saw in his face was a calm and patience that made her feel stupid for thinking the idiotic thought to not daring to show weakness in front of him. Had he not been weak a couple of occasions and it had been her task to get him on other thoughts?

"I dreamt about Alice... She was a few years older than she is now and she... She killed me because of what I did against her..." Valkyrie's voice stagnated and she had to struggle to keep back the tears.

Before she had time to react she once again had Skulduggery's arms around her. "I am sorry, Valkyrie."

"It's my fault, Skulduggery! It was my choice and I have to stand for the consequences! I... I have ruined my own sister!"

"No! Don't say that, Valkyrie! You have _not_ destroyed Alice! Did I not tell you a couple hours ago that we will solve this? Did I not say that we would fix and make her better? Did I not say that we would help Alice?"

Valkyrie could not answer since what Skulduggery was saying was the truth. She also knew that he would do everything he could to help her sister, _if there now was anything they could do_.

"Valkyrie, listen to me. I understand that you are upset right now. To live with this burden is not easy and believe me when I say that I know how you feel. You at least have the advantage to see Alice live and see her be happy."

"I'm sorry, Skulduggery... I know you can not take back the things you did as Lord Vile. I know that there are many people you will never be able to meet again because of the choices you did and that this is something you have to carry with you daily."

"That is true, but even if I like to talk about myself it is you and your problems we are talking about now. I just want to say one more thing about myself before we move forward and that is that even if I still feel pain and sorrow for the people I've killed and lost so is that pain something positive. Pain makes you know that you're alive."

"But you are not really alive", Valkyrie answered and could not help but smile.

Skulduggery chuckled and tilted his head. "No, not really. My existence is pretty complicated. Not even I knows how it really works."

"You know? Sometimes I envy you. It has to be so nice to avoid getting bruises, not have to worry about hunger, thirst and that you in the middle of an important decision or fight have to seek up a toilet."

"Well, being dead has, as you say, a great many advantages. Sometimes when I look at you and your everyday problems I can not help but miss my humanity a little, but then I quickly remind myself about that I am a living skeleton and the only one of my kind and then the missing dissapears pretty quickly."

Valkyrie laughed again and laid her head against Skulduggery's bony chest. She laid her arms around his back and pressed him close before she gave out a deep sigh. She felt how Skulduggery stroked her back slowly and pressed his teeths against her hair, which was his version of a kiss.

"Does it feel better now?"

"A lot." Valkyrie closed her eyes. "Will you stay with me for the rest of the night?"

"Of course." Skulduggery laid down on her bed with her on top and then settled down against her pillows. "I will always be here for you."

"And I for you. Until the end." Valkyrie looked up at Skulduggery. "I love you, Skulduggery Pleasant."

"And I love you, Valkyrie Cain."


	2. Chapter 2

**I really enjoyed "The Nightmare" that I wanted to do a second one, but this time it's Skulduggery that is dreaming instead of Valkyrie. For me, the worst thing that could happen Skulduggery is losing Valkyrie, so why not make him dream a nightmare where just that happens?**

 **I hope you like this story! Please review! :)**

* * *

 _Everything was quiet around him. Nothing moved, nothing made any sound. Wherever he looked he only saw destruction. Destroyed buildings, lifeless bodies, blood and body parts lay everywhere._

 _Enemies and friends that had met horrible and painful fates because of him. If only he had been stronger, if he only had been listening to her and understood earlier that something was wrong... Why had he not believed her when she had said this would happen? He if anyone knew how easy it was for predictions to come true._

 _He stood up and brushed off his suit jacket and pants before he once again let his eyes scan off the battlefield. He seemed to be the only survivor, at least on this side. He lifted up his hand and read the air to see if anyone else except for himself was conscious and could feel movements on the other side of some fallen buildings._

 _"I'm not alone, in other words..." he mumbled to himself and floated some centimetres from the ground up in the air to get an overview of the battlefield._

 _A few hundred meters further away he could see movements. Sorcerers and doctors from the Sanctuary that helped the wounded to safety. He could distinguish China Sorrows where she stood in the middle of the group and gave orders, but also Synecdoche and her medical team that laid those that were too wounded to walk by themselves, up on stretchers._

They seem to have everything under control _, he thought to himself._ Good, then I don't have to worry that they'll need my help since I have other things to take care of.

 _He floated higher up in the air before he turned around and flew away from the sorcerers. His eye sockets saw destroyed buildings and roads, hurt sorcerers, dead bodies and a lot of chocked, afraid, sad, despaired and angry faces. The only thing he did not see was the person he searched for and which meant everything to him._

 _The young woman to which he could die again to protect..._

 _A creaking sound made him flinch. Right under him he could see a pair of wood planks that moved and when he read the air and understood who lay under the planks, he quickly dove down to the ground and tore off the planks from the person that lay there under. He lifted her up in his arms and pushed her close to his bony chest._

 _She breathed intermittently and was covered in dust, dirt and remains from the destroyed buildings that was around them. In her face he could see bruises, scrapes and cuts. He stroked away a strand of hair from her face and laid his gloved hand on her cheek._

 _"Valkyrie..." he whispered._

 _Valkyrie slowly opened her eyes, but only halfway. A faint smile could be seen on her lips. "Skulduggery..."_

 _"I am here now, Valkyrie. Everything will be alright. I am here."_

 _She did not answer, but Valkyrie instead let her hand stroke over his jawbone and up to his cheekbone before she once again closed her eyes and whispered: "Skulduggery... There is so much I want to tell you... So much you do not know about how I feel about you. Unfortunately I do not... have much time left... I am dying, Skulduggery. I can feel... how the life is running out of me... I have internal bleedings and a lot of broken bones. Before I disappear... it is one thing I want you... to know and that is..." Valkyrie coughed and blood poured out from her mouth down along her jaw._

 _"I love you, Skulduggery Pleasant... Until the end..."_

 _Her hand fell limply down along her side while at the same time she stopped breathing and her body became totally still in his fathom..._

* * *

"NO!"

Skulduggery sat up in the chair he was sitting in. He was in the room which he called his office in his home at Cemetery Road. Without him noticing he had for some reason fallen into one of his meditation stages, which was the closest to sleep he came since the day he had become a skeleton.

His hands shook and he clenched them to make them stop shaking. He hated to show any kind of weakness, especially in front of _her_... She looked up to him, she idolized him (even if she did not want to confess it out loud, he knew for certain that she did) and she saw him as immortal. _Her_ Skulduggery always knew how he would get them out of the danger they found themselves in, _her_ Skulduggery never gave up, _her_ Skulduggery always were there for her, _her_ Skulduggery did not show any weakness!

A sigh escaped him and he stood up. He laid his skeleton hands on the table and forced himself to breath calm and still, despite that he did not really need to do it. That was something he had started doing after Valkyrie had come back, since she had suggested it to him.

"You always say to me that I should take a deep breath when I am upset, so why should it not work for you? And before you say anything else, yes, I am aware of that you are dead, but it can not hurt to try, right?"

When he had calmed down himself and once again could focus he stretched and walked out of the room. He found himself in the living room when he heard the sound of a door that opened and closed and within a few seconds he had a newly awake Valkyrie in front of him.

She wore a black nightgown that fit tight around her body and that got his eye sockets to follow her bodies contours and curves. He liked what he saw and would not mind letting his hands stroke along...

What was he doing?! Where did these thoughts come from? It was his partner he was thinking these thoughts of!

He forced himself to look into Valkyrie's eyes instead of her body. Her hair was in disarray and her whole posture radiated tiredness but also... concern? Skulduggery immediately became on his guard and all forbidden thoughts about Valkyrie's appearance immediately disappeared from his consciousness. Had something happened to Alice or her parents?

When their eyes met Valkyrie ran up to him and laid her hands on his arms and looked up in his black eye sockets. "Skulduggery, are you alright? I awoke of hearing you screaming. Has something happen?"

"Of course not. If I had been in danger, don't you think I would have asked for your help?"

"Yes, but..."

Skulduggery held up a finger in front of her face. "No buts! You know what we've said about that word."

Despite her concern Valkyrie could not help but smile. "That it's one of those few words we don't talk about."

Skulduggery nodded. "Precisely. So, now that you seen that it's nothing wrong with me I'm going to escort you back to your bedroom so you can get back to your beautiful dreams."

"Oh no, you won't get away that easily!" Valkyrie lifted her index finger towards Skulduggery and gave him a meaningful gaze. "I will not go back to bed until you tell me why you were screaming."

"Nothing escapes you, right?" Skulduggery sighed and laid his hands around Valkyrie's waist and turned her around. "I'll tell while we walk back to your room."

He removed his hands from her waist and instead let his right hand lay against her lower back to make her continue to walk. A thought about that he had liked the feeling his hands against her waist had given him, was quickly pushed back deep into his consciousness.

"To make a short story even shorter: I had a nightmare."

Valkyrie turned her head towards him. She raised an eyebrow and looked at him with a surprised expression. "You, dream a nightmare?"

"I see that you are outmost surprised. Just because I am a skeleton and does not sleep in the same way as you humans, doesn't that have to mean that even I can dream? After all it's so much that we do not know about my existence. I have a consciousness that makes me able to talk, remember and feel things."

"That may be true, but I thought you needed to sleep to be able to dream."

"Well, my meditation is like a kind of sleep since I, as you already know, don't hear or see anything while I meditate. I'm not saying this to tease you, but sometimes you sleep really hard. So hard that I sometime suspect that you wouldn't wake up even if a horde of elephants ran through the house."

"Why would a horde of elephants run through your house?" Valkyrie smiled.

"You know what I mean!" Skulduggery said irritated but Valkyrie could see on his posture that he smiled.

"Okay, enough talking about my sleeping habits and your meditation! What could you have dreamed that made you scream like that?"

They now were in the room that Valkyrie used as bedroom the nights she spent at Skulduggery. She lay down on the bed and put the duvet over herself before she patted the blanket next to her. Skulduggery sat down next to her and laid his arm around her shoulders. Valkyrie leaned against him, closed her eyes and lay her arm around his waist.

"I..." Skulduggery began but interrupted himself. Pictures from the nightmare flew by his eyes. Valkyrie's damaged, bloody and lifeless body that lay in his arms...

Valkyrie said nothing, but just laid herself closer to Skulduggery. He laid his cheek against her head and squeezed her shoulder. "I dreamed that you... died in my arms. We were on a battlefield that resembled the one that occurred when we fought against Darquesse, but in my dream I think we had fought against another, unknown enemy and when I finally found you... you were already so badly injured that I couldn't save you."

Valkyrie did not answer now either, but just took a harder grip on Skulduggery. She looked into his black eye sockets and despite that he did not have any eyes that could express emotions, she could despite that, based on his body language and the way he bowed his head, see that he was sad and worried.

She knew that he knew what she thought about him and what he meant for her. He was her mentor, partner and best friend. He was the one that always stood up for her when she needed help. He was the one that was there for her when she was in danger or when she needed a shoulder to cry on. He was the one that stopped her when she was on her way to do something stupid and he was the one that always got her to laugh when she was feeling down.

Skulduggery looked back into Valkyrie's brown eyes and in them he could see what he meant for her. Despite what happened between the two of them they would always be there for the other. They had already been through so much together and always managed to get out of it with their lives intact.

"Skulduggery, it was only a dream, even if I know it was a horrible one. Have you thought about that maybe it really wasn't a nightmare, but that your subconscious showed you what you fear most of all that could happen? I am aware of that we have been experiencing more than _one_ near death experience, but that does not mean that one of us is going to disappear." Valkyrie laid her hand on Skulduggery's cheek and smiled. "I know for certain that I will not for yet another couple of hundred years, anyway."

Skulduggery could not help but laugh and pushed Valkyrie closer to himself. He pushed his teeth against her forehead, which was his way of kissing. "And you can rest assured that I either will not disappear yet for another hundred years. I after all have bad guys to fight against, humans to save and continue to surprise people with my irresistible charm and charisma."

"And let us not forget your tremendously fantastic talent to make enemies, plunge us into deadly danger, come up with last minute plans and show off with your fantastical one liners."

"If I did not know better Valkyrie, I would like to claim that you are trying to insult me by disguising it as praise."

Valkyrie laughed and gave Skulduggery's cheek a kiss. "Nothing escapes you and your enormous ego, does it?"

"Never", Skulduggery answered and if he had had lips, he would have smiled.


End file.
